A new film festival has come to Palm Beach County

Eddie Ritz, Palm Beach Post
·4 min read
"Two Tickets to Greece" will be shown at the Kravis Center on Thursday, Jan. 26 and kicks off The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival. The festival will feature over three dozen films shown at seven different locations through out the county.
"Two Tickets to Greece" will be shown at the Kravis Center on Thursday, Jan. 26 and kicks off The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival. The festival will feature over three dozen films shown at seven different locations through out the county.

Calling all movie lovers! The inaugural Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival starts Thursday, Jan. 26 and runs through Feb. 16. Presented by MorseLife, this event will feature over three dozen film screenings at seven separate theaters.

The screenings will include features, documentaries and short films from both up-and-coming and established filmmakers from around the world.

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The festival slogan is "Experience the Magic of Cinema" with a stated mission to bring these "highly-anticipated and thought-provoking films to Palm Beach County and present them alongside events that feature the actors, directors and select industry guests."

The festival carries the name of North Palm Beach resident Donald M. Ephraim, who for decades led the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Ephraim's ties to film date back at least to his days as an attorney in Chicago, where he represented some of the city's most well-known celebrities, including the dueling film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel.

This new festival grew out of a virtual program for MorseLife senior community residents in the early days of the pandemic, according to a press release announcing the festival in the fall of 2022.

In addition to American, British, French, Israeli, and Mexican movies, the festival will showcase a global array of films from Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kurdistan, Luxembourg, Morocco, New Zealand, Sweden, and Uruguay.

Beyond entertaining, these films were also selected to encourage discussion and interaction among attendees.

The festival kicks off at 7 p.m.. Thursday, Jan. 26 at the Kravis Center, Cohen Pavilion in West Palm Beach with the film "Two Tickets to Greece."

This is the U.S. premiere of the comedy, in French with subtitles. It stars Olive Cote as recently divorced Blandine, who while struggling to figure out the rest of her life reconnects with an old friend, Magalie, played by Laure Calmy. Loud, spontaneous and fearless, Magalie imposes herself on Blandine for their dream trip to Greece. The dream trip is not quite as dreamy as they'd hoped.

The film was directed by Marc Fitoussi, who will be at the premiere.

To complete the experience, attendees will be given a Greek snack box.

Though opening night is at the Kravis Center, the other films will be shown at CMX Downtown at the Gardens, CMX Cinemas Wellington, Movies of Lake Worth, Paragon at Delray Marketplace, the Regal Royal Palm Beach, IPIC Boca Raton and IPIC Delray Beach.

The films that will be shown throughout the festival include "Ali & Ava," "All Man: The International Male Story," "Balaban," "The Blue Caftan," "Breaking the Ice," "Calendar Girls," "Cinema Sabaya," "Darryl Jones: In The Blood," "Dos Estaciones," "Farewell, Mr. Haffman," "The Fence," "The Forger," "Goodnight Soldier," "The Grump: In Search of an Escort," "Haute Couture," "iMordecai," "Juniper," "Karaoke," "Little Town," "Love & Mathematics," "Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power," "Mission Joy: Finding Happiness in Troubled Times," "Music Pictures: New Orleans," "My Donkey, My Lover, & I," "No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics," "Nowhere Special," "Peace by Chocolate," "Rally Caps," "Scarlet," "Sylvie of the Sunshine State," "The Takeover," "The Visitor," "The Wait," "The Wild One," "The Worst Ones," "You Can Live Forever," and the Palm Beach Student Showcase of Films and Reel Shorts.

Part of The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival, "My Donkey, My Lover, & I" will be shown 6 p.m. Jan. 29 at IPIC Boca. In this film, Antoinette, (Laure Calamy), is looking forward to her long-planned summer holidays with her secret lover Vladimir. When learning that Vladimir can’t make it because his wife organized a surprise trekking trip in the Cevennes National Park, Antoinette impulsively decides to follow them, with Patrick, a cantankerous, protective donkey.

The festival will close Feb. 16 with a screening of "Peace by Chocolate" at CMX Downtown in Palm Beach Garden. This true story is a drama and comedy about a Syrian refugee struggling to settle into small-town life in Nova Scotia after his family's chocolate factory was bombed.

The Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Film Festival, presented by MorseLife

Where: The Kravis Center, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach

CMX Downtown at the Gardens, 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens Ave., Palm Beach Gardens

CMX Cinemas Wellington, 10312 Forest Hill Blvd., Wellington

Movies of Lake Worth, 7380 Lake Worth Road, Lake Worth

Paragon at Delray Marketplace, 14775 Lyons Road, Delray Beach

Regal Royal Palm Beach, 1003 State Road 7, Royal Palm Beach

IPIC Boca Raton, 301 Plaza Real, Boca Raton

IPIC Delray Beach, 25 SE Fourth Ave., Delray Beach

When: for movie times and locations visit palmbeachfilmfestival.org

Cost: for prices or to purchase tickets visit tickets.completeticketsolutions.com

Information: palmbeachfilmfestival.org

Eddie Ritz is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at eritz@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: New MorseLife film festival at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach